SixSEED Partners

Transformational Leadership

Polarity Approach to Expedite Hospital Integration & DEI

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Building Leadership Capacity to facilitate culture change and Improve
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Joy W. Goldman RN, MS PCC: CEO SixSEED Partners

Background

SixSEED Partners was invited to help build leadership capacity in patient care and nursing leaders to support the integration of two separate hospital entities within one health system. After the first year of facilitated work and implementing a collective leadership assessment, this second year was focused on engaging the leaders in recreating a culture that supported integration while allowing for the retention of what was unique and market competitive for each individual entity.

The Strategy

SixSEED Partners designed a two-day workshop that introduced the leaders to both/and thinking as a complementary tool to traditional problem-solving – either/or thinking. We were most concerned about surfacing the fears and concerns from the smaller hospital entity, that also happened to be a microcosm of the lesser served, mostly black community. Leaders were divided according to hospital entities and each had the chance to identify most treasured cultural attributes and worst fears of integration with themselves and then with each other.

The Solution

Fears that were identified by the smaller hospital included loss of identity; constant comparison and loss of unique attributes; lack of ability to autonomously act; loss of connection to their geographic community; and lack of influence in decision-making. What they valued and wanted to preserve, for both organizations included their unique histories; their commitment to the patients, community, and each other; a spirit of collaboration; shared knowledge; and diversity of staff and patients.

The Impact

At the conclusion of the two days, the leaders created a complete polarity map focused on their integrated one system. They had action steps to leverage retaining the best of current culture while preparing to best meet the future. They also identified early warning signs to alert them when they were overdoing either pole: too much tradition and too much change.

    If you’d like to learn more about bringing this work to your organization, contact us at SixSEED Partners.

    An Alternative to Setting Leadership Goals

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    As we prepare for a new year, we propose an alternative to setting goals, perhaps you might play with a different way of thinking and then notice the impact on your goals. In recent conversations with healthcare leaders, the question has come up around: “How do I provide safety and react to the emerging Omicron spread while also moving forward with strategic efforts? Do I put everything on hold in fear of contagion? If we do that, how will we continue to make progress?”

    I applaud this leader as this is a great question that I’m sure others are wrestling with as well. As the enclosed photo illustrates, and with credit to our strategic partners at 3 Vital Questions, Polarity Partnerships, and The Full Circle Group, in order to create sustainable change with less wear and tear on the system, we must expand our thinking to include numerous competing priorities and we need to invest in our staff to be better able to manage complex, rapidly changing dynamics. More to come on this!

    If you’d like to know more, please respond or email info@sixseedpartners.com.

    Cultivating Both/And Thinking to Support Clinical Leaders to Effectively Lead through System Change

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    Joy W. Goldman RN, MS PCC:  CEO SixSEED Partners

    In the beginning :

    SixSEED Partners (SSP) was invited to provide team development support to a high profile clinical executive committee in a regional healthcare system. We initially partnered with this physician and administrative leadership team last fall for a full day retreat focused on developing team dynamics and strategies. We introduced them to several frameworks and practical tools that gave them insights for how to leverage their complementary strengths to get their work done even more effectively. The system clearly supported this type of development because all team members were present and committed to this experiential learning process, despite it taking away from their revenue generating clinical work that day. The executive team found it so valuable, that they wanted more.  

    Embarking on a Leadership Development Series (LDS) experiential learning process:

    SixSEED Partners partnered with the Chief Physician Executive and the Managing Director of Strategy to create a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis for team member input on relevant leadership strengths and challenges. We also used immediate and upcoming leadership transitions as the action-learning platform for the participants to apply their new tools and thinking paradigms. By using our “4D” framework of “Discover-Design-Deliver-Debrief”, the client helped shape a learning design that integrated real-time pressures and systemic forces for change. For practicality, these experiential learning sessions were integrated into their existing monthly strategic meetings to minimize time away from the clinical area and maximize their time together.

    Discovering a new Thinking tool for unsolvable problems:

    In looking at the real-time pressures and changes this executive team was facing in their system, we knew they could benefit from learning to look at their complexities with Polarity thinking. As mentioned in prior blogs, it has been proven that using polarity thinking (both/and) along with traditional problem-solving thinking has a measurable impact on leading through complexity and change. 

    Experiential Learning Module (ELM): Doing S.M.A.L.L. for Measurement and ROI:

    We used key themes from their SWOT analysis results to create three unique polarity maps that measured individual, team and system-level tensions for this executive team:

    • Providing Direction and Inviting Participation (Individual)
    • Tactical and Strategic (Team)
    • Centralization and Decentralization (System)

    This work took the team through steps 1-3 of the 5-step polarity assessment process known as the “SMALL” methodology, which includes:

    1. Seeing
    2. Mapping
    3. Assessing 
    4. Learning
    5. Leveraging

    In our most recent two-hour module, the leaders focused on Step 4 – Learning, about the polarity thinking framework and discussing it in the context of their complementary styles. The learning was deepened when the leaders began to see beyond their preferred perspective within the 3 polarity maps to seeing the broader context within the relative dynamic at hand in their actual work. Most notable was the dialogue around shifting from a place of system “blame” – the downside of decentralization – to better leveraging integration of the health system’s priorities with less energy being wasted in frustration. This traditional “right/wrong, either/or” approach began to shift to “how can we better integrate system factors as we design and execute our work”.

    The map below illustrates this team’s scrubbed SWOT analysis, represented as a polarity map. As you can see, the 2 poles to leverage over time to create an effective and high performing team are the Strengths of Current and the opportunities of the Future, while minimizing the weaknesses and threats of both poles. The other scrubbed map shares the executive team’s results, which highlight an opportunity to better leverage Centralization. While these results are valuable as a baseline for this team, what was even more valuable from this experience already was the dialogue that emerged between the participants around an alternative perspective and way of thinking about systemic influences in their work. During our next session, we will take the team through action steps and warning signs to help them best leverage these essential tensions for sustainable change (Step 5 of S.M.A.L.L.).

    Let’s hear from you

    We’d love to hear your insights in helping clinical executive teams develop systemic thinking applied to current challenges. If this work seems like it could help you and your teams, we’d love to talk with you to explore how this approach might help your clinical leaders. Please post your responses on our LinkedIn page or send us an email here.

    How to Hire a CEO: Neglected Attributes

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    Joy W. Goldman RN, MS PCC:  CEO SixSEED Partners

    Introduction: Case for Change

    Turnover at the CEO position remains high: According to the American College of Healthcare Executives, CEO turnover was 17 percent in 2019.* (ACHE: “Hospital CEO Turnover Rate Shows Small Decrease.” – press release. In Development Dimension International’s 2021 Global Leadership Forecast, that polled close to 16,000 leaders across the globe, 55% of CEO’s indicated developing the next generation of leaders as their top challenge. These statistics and personal experience working with clients who have been traumatized by making a wrong choice, motivated Dr. Larry McEvoy, Dr. Kevin Mosser and I to offer healthcare boards a webinar through The Governance Institute  called “How to Hire a CEO: A Guide for Ensuring Effective Selection at the Most Important Position.”  

    For SixSEED Partners, we see the hiring of a CEO as only one part of our sixth seed: Leadership Ecosystem Capacitation.

     

    Current Process:  Strengths and Gaps:

    Whether in our country or within healthcare, we continue to look to the CEO as a heroic leader and in doing so, often place great emphasis on the CEO’s accomplishments and experience.  It was fascinating to us that the participants on the webinar placed low importance to the role of experience in their candidate selection yet, in practice, it was one of the top three attributes that they assessed. (see graphs below).  Bob Anderson and Bill Adams, in their book: Scaling Leadership: Building organizational capability and capacity to create outcomes that matter most” dispel the myth that leaders that prioritize results and technical expertise have the greatest impact on business results.  To the contrary, after culling through hundreds of thousands of 360- degree -feedback assessments and comments from around the globe, these skills were shown to be non-differentiators for high performing leaders.  Their research identified ten attributes, six of which were people-related.  Some of these include developing others; empowering people; team-builder; leads by example; and good listener.  

    We were also surprised with the time paid to assessment results and interviewer ratings, given neither interventions were rated as having great importance to the participants.  In our experience, we agree, in part with this assessment, given our observation that this process is often incomplete, where the personality profile results remain with the search firm and are not used by the hiring company to integrate into designing behavioral interview questions targeted at possible gaps, nor using as development once the candidate is hired.

    The Neglected Attributes:

    If you’ve read this far, you are probably guessing where we believe you need to focus to have the greatest chances of success for the candidate; your executive team; and your organization.  The two attributes least assessed yet deemed most important to the CEO’s success is their ability to scale leadership, and to leverage and manage paradox (seeming opposite tensions).

    Experience matters less in rapidly changing and volatile situations.  What matters more is the degree to which you’ve built leadership and thinking capacity in your organization.  As an example, SixSEED Partners was asked to offer change leadership training to a cohort of internal medicine physicians.  In partnership with the Chief Quality Officer, we designed a workshop where we introduced both/and thinking as an adjunct to traditional problem-solving thinking.  If these physicians have the thinking capacity to leverage individual AND team; mission AND margin; decentralized AND centralized needs; candor AND diplomacy; advocacy AND inquiry among others, then collaboration is strengthened and we increase their ability to lead sustainable change.

    The Leadership Ecosystem Capacity Approach to Hire and Develop

    What does this mean for you?  Here are several steps you can take make a better CEO hire:

    1. Elevate talent development as THE FIRST Strategic priority- for the board; for the executive team and for each leader.

    2. Ask your CEO candidates a question similar to the following:  “If your current organization were to give you a grade of A to F in relation to how well you’ve prepared them for your departure, what would they say?  On what would they be basing their rating?”  You want to listen for details around the use of development strategies like rotational assignments; creating a learning environment; internal promotions; and prepared successors.  You want to listen for a blend of “I” and “We” statements.

    3. Assess for their thinking capacity to manage paradox:  “Give me an example of a decision you had to make where you felt torn between two or more competing perspectives.  Who was involved?  What was at stake?  What did you consider in your decision-making process?  What did you do?  What was the outcome?  What did you learn through the process?

    Let’s hear from you

    We’d love to hear your perspective as you and your board plan for your next CEO hire.  Please post your responses on our LinkedIn page or send us an email here.

    An Essential Leadership Competency: Leveraging the Polarity of Power And Love

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    As we at SixSEED Partners live our declaration of being part of creating a just and equitable culture where health is a right for all, we notice our own internal “no more” struggles that put us squarely in the tension between peaceful protest/establishing clear boundaries AND Showing Understanding/Compassion/Forgiveness.  We’ve been listening to our clients as they encounter their own “no more” struggles and navigate difficult and emotional conversations about racism, antiracism and white privilege. It is our belief that especially now — an essential leadership competency is the ability to leverage the polarity of Power And Love.

    “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” ― Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    Power and Love Defined:

    We view the tension of Power and Love as part of our SEEDS of “Leadership,” “Culture,” and “Well-Being”. We’re not alone. Several popular leadership and social change books have been written based on that quote. (See: Adam Kahane: “Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change,” 2009; and,  Barry Oshry “Power and Love: A systems perspective: http://newstories.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Power-and-Love.pdf) 

    We articulate below what we define as Power and Love:

    Power – Spaces and Processes for Differencing

    A Leader generates trust by making it safe for individuals to stand in their strength and voice their unique differences – and serves to create a strong Culture / Well-Being.

    Love – Spaces and Processes for Integrating

    A Leader generates trust by promoting shared values for equity and fairness to connect and unify to accomplish common goals and shared objectives – and serves to create a strong Culture / Well-Being.

    Racial and Health Inequity: Power AND Love Tension in Operation

    Recently, SixSEED provided support to a senior leader who described himself as, the “new kid on the block.” A person of color who had joined a predominantly white tenured senior leadership team. He was struggling. In his new role, it seemed that compared to his colleagues, it was seldom if ever being asked about his perspectives. When he volunteered his perspectives, it seemed they were pretty quickly dismissed. Add what he described as a “hierarchy-of-influence” — his support function was less “professional” than those of his mostly white colleagues who were “at top of the pyramid.” Add to this — his staff were also mostly people of color and frustrated by the perspectives he was attempting to share – and he was caught in the middle. Political tensions rooted in racial and health inequity dynamics were adding fuel to the fire and all this “adding-up” was taking a toll. One question was, “where do you even start?”

    Mapping the Tension

    We know from Oshry’s work that Top, Middle, and Bottom stories in organizations involve not just the hierarchical relationship – there are also conditions. At different times, we can be a Top, Middle or Bottom — at different times and for different work processes. One place to start is by heightening awareness of the polarity of Power And Love as we move through these conditions as leaders. The attached Polarity Map for Power And Love includes Action Steps that offer possibilities to intervene in the processes of “holding space” to honor differences and Commonalities. These processes are less about “who’s right” or “who’s wrong” and more about the spaces themselves – the seeing  differences and commonalities. 

    The Polarity Map on the following page summarizes elements from Oshry’s work. If you’d like your own editable polarity map to give yourself the systemic view of the tensions you are navigating, complete this contact form and indicate “requesting Power And Love polarity map.”

    We’d like to hear how you’re navigating this tension. Additionally, if you have questions about how you, your team, or your organization might apply this method now, send us a message and we’ll contact you within 1 business day to help guide. and support you.

    Grounded and Conscious Leadership

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    We declared this in our recent blog addressing systemic racism, which also quoted Angel Kyodo Williams, Sensei: “Love and Justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.” 

    Now is the time for inner change so that we can transform our many economic, social, spiritual and health divides into just, equitable, and healthy systems for all.

    To do this – as human beings and as leaders – we must be grounded and conscious to effectively take on this formidable challenge, in addition to all the usual challenges on a daily basis.

    Knowing that grounded and conscious leadership is a vital competency for our healthcare leaders and teams, SixSEED Partners (SSP) is strategically partnering with Healthy Companies (HC) because of their vast research, tested applications and impactful results from their Grounded and Conscious Leader framework.

    Founded by Dr. Bob Rosen in 1988, Healthy Companies has spent over 30 years culminating personalized, evidence-based solutions that succeed in transforming executives into leaders, staff into teams, and companies into healthy and sustainable ecosystems. Their work has been applied nationally and internationally across the high tech, automotive, banking and healthcare industries, amongst others. Their 2015 research exploring the 6 dimensions of a Grounded and Conscious Leader are proven to predict high performance and improved business outcomes. 

    Due to the tremendous synergy between SSP’s and HC’s missions for creating healthy outcomes for leaders and systems, SSP’s Joy Goldman (CEO) and Petra Platzer (COO) became certified facilitators of Healthy Companies’ Grounded and Conscious Leader framework. This methodology for “Developing Grounded and Conscious Leaders” integrates action learning, behavioral science, social accountability, full-brain learning and an online portal for just-in-time tools, all of which support sustainable behavior change.

    As SixSEED Partners’ commitment to provide integrated solutions to heal healthcare, we are excited to co-facilitate a virtual workshop with Healthy Companies where participants will explore these 6 dimensions and apply them to their own situations.

    See here to learn more about this free virtual offering:

    “Grounded Leadership: The Vital Foundation to Lead Through Uncertainty”

    August 5, 2020 | 12:00 – 1:30pm EST

    Register today!